Quote:
Originally Posted by WingedFrog
Although my fuel tank is still on the workbench waiting for the sealant to cure, after looking at a friend's -12 sight glass, I agreed with his statement as well as Gagarin's that it is useless during refueling and hardly useable for pre-flight check. I am wondering though if for refueling some contraption using a miror could help. This would require just to view the top 3 windows, i.e., those to check when topping off. the mirror could hang from the top of the tank and reflect toward the filling neck. Just an idea...
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Actually, the sight window is not intended for use during refueling since it can't be seen from the starboard side at all. Even if you could see the sight gauge and even if you have the Moeller gauge on top of the tank, it won't register the top gallon or two, putting the last gallon or so into the tank is the problem especially if you are using 100LL out of an av gas refueling pump. Those nozzles put out a fast flow that is hard to control and the opening on the 12 will just spray out fuel if you are not super careful. With a hand pump setup you can go very slow at the final last gallon and actually hear the fuel coming up into the filler neck. When away from my home airport and using an airport filling station I place a thin rubber pad over the filler opening to avoid the chance of a spill on the lexan window:

The picture shows the pad in place and my home base refueling setup. I normally run on car gas from the local Chevron.
The point of all this being that even with the Moeller gauge in the tank, please be really careful putting in the last couple of gallons to avoid fuel burping out on you and the airplane

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Without the Moeller gauge, a quick glance at the Dynon fuel gauge before shutdown will tell you how much fuel you will be putting in (obvious, I know).
Regarding preflight, if you look at the sight glass window, you will NOT see the fuel since the fuel is clear. If you place your hand on the trailing edge of the wing and gently shake the wing up and down while looking at the sight glass you WILL see the fuel bobbing up and down (obvious, again), unless the tank is chock full.
All that said, I am seriously considering installing a Moeller gauge since I have to pull the cover off the tank to do the Service Bulletin reinforcement. But by gosh I would be keeping my sight glass, so I can
visually check my fuel at preflight.
I don't think I have driven the thread off topic since the point of the thread was installing the Moeller

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Tony